Archive for the ‘Puzzle’ tag
‘Puzzle Family’ Has The Craziest Trailer Ever
It’s a shame that we received this announcement of Puzzle Family after our podcast was recorded for the week. Instead of the , this game and it’s insane trailer would have been the leading story of the bunch. Before I delve into the specifics, take a gander at the trailer. It's better to go into this blind. Trust me.
That's hot stuff, right? Puzzle Family has one of the weirdest trailers we’ve seen in a long, long time. Vivid, flashing, and possibly seizure-inducing lights? Check. Horrible animation, but adorable art? Check. Promise of insane antics in convoluted games? Check.
If the trailer didn't clue you in, Puzzle Family is a mini-game collection that puts you in the shoes of Akoo or one of his 20 fascinatingly eccentric family members through three initial mini-game experiences: block matching, Guitar Hero-style rhythm tapping, and a puzzle memory exercise. There are a total of eight mini-games in all, five of which can be unlocked through an in-game currency (of sorts).
Puzzle Family will launch as a ad-based "free" download this July 7, but you'll be able to support the title and get a leg-up on unlocking the extra five modes and other in-game items by purchasing the premium ad-free version, Puzzle Family Starpack for $1.99.
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‘Push-Cars’ Review – Hit the Road, Sparky
Push-Cars [$0.99 / HD] is a puzzle game with a conscience. Like a pint-sized version of Pixar's Cars, you've got a bunch of anthropomorphic cars to handle. There's the eco-friendly ones like Sparky, the slow but green electric, and there's the gas guzzlers like Sixteen. Your job is to smash those gas guzzlers to bits while helping the others slip out of town.
It's not a complicated job. You're presented with a overhead city block, stylized and designed from real maps of American cities. The cars are positioned on the road, and all you can do is tap to rotate them. They can only go straight, and will drive until they hit something. Once you find a solution that will let the good cars escape and smash the bad cars into each other, a building or a dead end, hit the gas and it all plays out.
It sounds pretty straightforward (and maybe a touch heavy-handed), but in practice it's a lot of fun. The early puzzles are simple, but as more cars are introduced there are more elements to handle. The cars travel at different speeds, so lining them up to intersect each others paths can be tricky. Some can take off-road routes, others can leap over a single car or crush opposition beneath them. By the time you've met all the cars, you'll be faced with some major challenges. Even physics come in to play on some levels.
And that's just the first half of the game. Push-Cars includes 90 levels (all of which can be unlocked by playing through them, or you can pay to unlock them all). The first 45 take you across the country, visiting landmarks in New York, Vegas, San Fransisco and more. Once you make it through those levels, you head back to the start. There you'll find new levels that mix all the game's cars in on repeated maps. The difficulty curve isn't always consistent, but you'll find the later levels increasingly more challenging.
If the difficulty is too much, there's an in-game hint system that will show you the correct positioning of two of your incorrectly positioned cars. This is a big help, but there's a catch – the game only gives you and handful of hints to start, and rewards a few more throughout the game. Need more help? You can buy a pack of 10 hints for a buck. I might be dating myself here, but this gave me flashbacks to those old 1-900 video game tip lines. On the other hand, every puzzle is solvable without hints, and there's no downside to taking a trial-and-error approach, so I can't say this bothers me much.
Push-Cars' stylized maps add a lot of charm. You get a sense of looking down at the actual cities, but they fit in nicely with the game's cartoonish art. There are a few less-charming features. I wasn't big on the game's music, and toggled it off pretty quickly. It has a rather unique theme that's got to be an acquired taste. The menus are also unnecessarily complicated. Finally, on small devices it can be a challenge to tap buttons or cars that are too close to one another.
That's just the small stuff, though. On the whole, I'm quite happy with Push-Cars. I've still got a few Game Center achievements to pick up, but I'm rocking the leaderboards and I've devoured the puzzles. They're just the right mix of sadistic and fair. The developer's taking feedback on our if you have an opinion to share, and a lot of our users seem happy with the game so far. So why not give it a ride?
Push-Cars, $0.99
Push-Cars HD, $1.99 (iPad Only)
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Coming Tonight: ‘Cargo Runners’, ‘James Pond’, ‘Puzzle Agent 2′, ‘Street Fighter IV Volt’ and More
My ability to write an amusing introduction for this week's bucket full of Wednesday night game releases has been obliterated due to my mind being blown that the powers that be are still making James Pond games. Maybe it's just me, but my perception of James Pond as a video game mascot was about in line with Bubsy. In the 90's it seems like everyone and their brother in law was trying to come up with the next Mario or Sonic, and I'm really not sure any succeeded. I suppose persistence isn't a bad thing though, and you can't fault 'em for trying. I'll still play a James Pond game 21 years later!
Anyway, here's how this works– Developers are able to set specific release dates for their iOS games. Since App Store features are updated on Thursdays, it seems that's most beneficial day to release a game if you're shooting for featuring. Of course the whole featuring process is a closely guarded secret surrounded by black majicks, so who knows if releasing on a Thursday even helps. Regardless, with a specific release date set, games become available in the regions of the App Store as it becomes that date. Thanks to New Zealand's proximity to the International Date Line, they get a first crack at everything. All of these games will be available at 11:00 PM Eastern, or earlier if you're east of North America:
Ballistik Wars, Free – – I'm not entirely sure yet what the catch is with this game being free, but I've loved everything Ponos has released so I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Ballistik Wars will also be great. I could be wrong, but seriously, Ponos has a great game catalog.
Cargo Runners, $7.99 – – This is the second entirely iOS board game by . Cargo Runners is a 2-4 player game where you race around the world collecting cargo. I've had a great time with board games on the iPad, and it's great seeing brand new ones being developed for the platform.
Color Bandits, 99¢ / HD – – I'm digging this game's gimmick. Apparently aliens have stolen color from the world and you're fighting to get it back. The whole black and white slowly transitioning to color thing seems really cool. And, hey, boss fights.
James Pond in the Deathly Shallows, 99¢ – – Agent Pond RETURNS!!! Oddly enough, James Pond games (at least the ones I played) always had lots of platforming elements, this one seems to be more of an underwater-themed horizontal shooter. Regardless, it's universal, a buck, and based on some great (although likely unknown to most) IP.
MapleStory Cygnus Knights Edition, $4.99 – – This is the second single player MapleStory game to be released on the App Store, the first of which being MapleStory Thief Edition [$4.99]. It's a bit of a mystery to me why they don't just bring a full MapleStory client over to iOS, as surely recent devices have to be powerful enough to run it… But, I guess they wouldn't be releasing Cygnus Knights if Thief didn't do well.
Mooniacs, $1.99 / Lite – – Namco is taking a crack at the "casual physics based puzzle game where you do things to earn stars" genre. (That is a genre now, right?) I tried this game at E3, and it's actually pretty cool. You fling your little dude up to catch flying things called "JujuBees." Namco has an interesting plan for releasing new updates, and additional content will apparently be unlocked as people globally reach some collected JujuBees threshold.
Postal Panic, Free – – This is a sorting game, but instead of needing to sort colors or shapes like so many sorting games out there you're sorting packages to a specific zip code as they come across a postal scanner. It seems like a clever real-world spin to the typical sorting game type.
Puzzle Agent 2, $4.99 / HD – – The original Puzzle Agent [$4.99] won a ridiculous amount of rewards last year, and I'm expecting the sequel to be just as awesome. Like the first one, Puzzle Agent 2 has Professor Layton-like puzzle-centric gameplay with a heavy coating of that signature Telltale Games charm.
Street Fighter IV Volt, 99¢ – – This is basically Street Fighter IV [99¢] but with online multiplayer. Oh, and it's got Balrog, Vega, and Cody which aren't available in the non-Volt version. Also, Capcom is planning on doing some kind of wacky incremental price raising where they're hiking the price by a buck each day it's out until it caps out at $6.99. Street Fighter IV was excellent, and the addition of online multiplayer in Volt should make this an easy day one purchase.
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An ‘Angry Birds’ Movie Might Be a Reality After All
It's no secret that Rovio has been looking to turn Angry Birds into an … even bigger worldwide phenomenon than it already is. They've already got an loaded with swag, as well as a where you can get in line to order everything from lunch boxes to Angry birds sandals of all things. Normally I'd say, "Who the hell buys this stuff?" But, I've seen a ridiculous amount of people wearing Angry Birds shirts, and my neighbors' dogs' favorite toys are their full array of plush Angry Birds toys. Oh, and it probably doesn't hurt that these days Angry Birds is available on every platform under the sun, and it wouldn't surprise me if sometime next year I'll be able to play Angry Birds on my microwave.
A provides some clues for the next step of Angry Birds world domination. David Maisel has joined the Rovio team with the mysterious title of "Special Advisor." I'm imagining this as a Game of Thrones-esque hand of the king kind of situation. Anyway, one of David's many claims to fame is transforming Marvel Entertainment from a comic book company desperate to remain relevant in the digital age to self-producing and self-financing massive summer blockbusters, turning existing comic franchises into multi-million dollar movie series and getting an entirely new generation interested in reading comics again.
Will Maisel be able to duplicate that success? It's hard to say. Rovio has recently raised $42m in investments to expand, and part of those expansion plans included acquiring Kombo, which is a leading Finnish animation studio. It seems that they've got all or most of the pieces of the puzzle to start pumping out Angry Birds TV shows, movies, or whatever else.
Now, I know how easy it is to just scoff and dismiss this news (all while simultaneously posting a comment to this story about how much you hate or "don't get" Angry Birds) but consider this– Angry Birds has single handedly turned a ridiculous amount of people onto gaming that otherwise never would have cared. Hell, I've seen this in my own family. My own father spent most of my life trying to get me to play less video games, and now courtesy of the iPad 2 I bought my parents plays "Pigs" (as he calls it) daily and has since branched out to similar casual games. I hear similar stories from friends all the time.
Love Angry Birds or hate it, it's fantastic to have something like this bringing this many more people into the world of gaming. If an Angry Birds movie is wildly successful, it will also serve to raise even more awareness to mobile gaming–
And that's never a bad thing.
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‘Edge Extended’ – Coming This Summer
Take a nice long look at this teaser image, because it's all that we know right now:
(Click for this image in gloriously animated .gif form.)
This is courtesy of a , and it's really not that hard to speculate what Edge Extended might be about. It seems pretty obvious that Extended would be a continuation of Edge [$2.99], which is a fantastic puzzle-centric platformer. It would seem to me that they couldn't just simply release a new game that's the same as the old one with different levels, so it also wouldn't shock me to see some new gameplay elements included. What those are is anyone's guess.
As soon as more details leak out of Mobigame, we'll be on top of 'em.
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‘D.A.R.K.’ Review – Dead in Space
GameLab's D.A.R.K. [99¢] is game with a conflicting sense of self. It's trying to simultaneously be a tense, science fiction horror game and a dual stick shooter with RPG elements. It's a difficult line to toe and in a lot of ways, D.A.R.K. is leading with the right foot, even if it flounders a bit here and there.
The game centers on a space marine who kind of looks like one of the marines from Starcraft II, but with a mohawk, as he investigates the loss of contact with a ship called the USS Storm Bringer. As these things tend to go with science fiction narratives, he quickly learns that things aren't as they seem and he needs to blast his way through waves of zombies and robots to get to the ships black box to find out what happened.
If this is all sounding a little like Dead Space or Alien to you, you're right, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's a time honored sci-fi trope because it works. Unfortunately, D.A.R.K. never seems too sure what it's supposed to be doing, concentrating on the atmosphere in a slower-paced horror setting, or cranking up the action as a dual stick shooter. There are short moments spread throughout the hour long campaign that try to create a feeling of dread, but much of the game relies on standard shooter concepts where you enter a room, clear a room, go to the next room.
That's another thing too — the game's description says, "Massive single-player campaign will have you playing for hours on end." That's simply not the case at the moment; the first episode included here will only take you around an hour to complete. Considering the game's low price it's not a big deal, but one might expect more content from the description. That said, starting a new game after finishing yields some different results, so it's worth rolling through twice. Judging by what's being , a second episode, universal support and an arena mode are coming in future updates, so there should be more content on the way, as well as (hopefully) a resolve for the cliffhanger ending of the first episode.
D.A.R.K. does try to mix things up with a few RPG elements to spice up the dual stick mayhem as well. While it's not deep, it does get things mostly right. Weapons are upgraded automatically depending on how much you use them and you have a small set of stats you can upgrade as your level progresses. There are only four different upgrade paths, health regeneration, hit points, speed and power. I'm not sure what else one could be added here, but it would have been nice to have a little more character customization.
The main difference you'll see in D.A.R.K. compared to a lot of dual stick shooters is that it is trying to tell its story and it's doing so by pushing you through a series of rooms and offering the sense of exploration. In between the arena-style battles are short exploration bits, simple puzzles sections and the occasional big narrative moment. This is where D.A.R.K. is doing something new and it would be nice to see more of it in the second episode. The shooting bits are all well and fine, but there is a lot more opportunity for the exploration parts to really capture players and pull them into the story. The same goes for the audio design, which could use a little work, but considering the type of game it is, you'll likely have you'd hand covering the speaker when you're playing, so it might not be worth investing too much time in it.
The exploration pieces are certainly more geared to telling the story visually and D.A.R.K. can do so, even if it's not always pretty. The color palette is very much in the same realm as most science fiction and the style looks a lot like Starcraft if it was set on a ship. The game is incredibly dark too, which I guess shouldn't really be surprising — but don't plan on being able to play it outside either way.
I rather like the idea of D.A.R.K. and with more content promised to be on the way, I have hopes it'll settle itself and decide exactly what type of game to be and how to do it. There is a lot of potential in the idea alone, so if GameLab can deliver the second episode and the arena mode before upping the price, they might have something truly interesting on their hands as long as they're not scared to make the puzzles a bit more challenging and the shooting parts a bit more sparse.
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‘Joining Hands’ Review – Don’t Forget to Hold Hands
Looking for a unique puzzle game to fill your hours? Take a look at Joining Hands [$2.99] by , creators of Grim Joggers [$1.99] and Azkend [$2.99]. It tells of the Whispering Wood, a place filled with boogeymen to frighten the little Peablins, Gloobins and Brufflins that inhabit it. To make it through safely, they all need to hold hands.
In each of Joining Hands' levels, you're faced with a hex grid and several of these cute little creatures. The trick is to arrange them so that no hand is left unheld. Creatures are happy when their hands are held, and unhappy with they have a free hand. When everyone's happy, the level is complete. This is easy to do when you're just dealing with Peablins–those little green guys will hold hands with anyone. But then they start sprouting extra limbs, and soon you're trying to link up one guy with 4 arms, another with 3, and a few other friends. It gets a little messy.
The levels have a few tricks to mix things up as well. Some hexes are blocked by stones. Others have stars, which can be claimed by covering them and completing the level. Hearts (or "Comfort Zones") add another twist: any creature on a heart will be happy even if his hands are empty.
There are six types of creatures, including Peablins. Brufflins have inflexible arms, so they need to be positioned carefully. Poeglins need their personal space, so don't put them next to anyone else. Grimmlins can't be moved–their armor is too heavy. Whisprins are always happy, but they frighten anyone next to them. And Gloobins, who were added in a recent update, can only hold tentacles with each other.
Joining Hands has a simple set of controls: drag to move the little guys around, and tap to rotate the Brufflins. There aren't any time limits or move restrictions, so you're free to experiment and work your way through each level with trial and error if needed. This makes the game feel a little bit too easy early on, but don't even think about relaxing. Later levels are a serious challenge–hard enough that I occasionally found myself wishing for a level skip mechanic.
You won't find any achievements here, but Joining Hands has a huge amount of content to keep you occupied. There are currently 10 episodes covering over 150 levels. You can also compete on Game Center leaderboards for total collected stars, although that caps out with people who've mastered the whole game.
I'm a bit of a sucker for cute art styles, but Joining Hands marries its cute art and sound design with solid, original gameplay. Our have been quite happy with it too. Puzzle fans should definitely check it out.
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Exclusive Hands-On with Jeff Minter’s Upcoming Dexterity Puzzler ‘Deflex’
Long-time hirsute, psychedelic game writer Jeff Minter of has released two iOS games, and they're two of the best games in the App Store: Minotron: 2112 [link] and Minotaur Rescue [link]. His third iOS game, a Universal (iPhone and iPad) release called Deflex, is on the way, and I've been frustrating myself having fun with a pre-release he recently sent over, for the past couple of days.
Deflex is a dexterity puzzle game, of sorts. It is an iOS adaptation of for the Sinclair machines, VIC-20, and Atari 8-bits, itself inspired by an earlier, simpler Commodore PET title. Gameplay is tricky to describe, and trickier to master. Or so it seems — I'm rather a ways from mastering it, myself.
The game takes you through level after level (52 in all) of different characters — oxen, bulls, smileys, telephones — arrayed about various wall configurations. You control a ball that appears at level's start, bouncing slowly back and forth along a linear path. The object of the game is to absorb the on-screen characters with your ball. It's the manner in which you get your ball over to all the characters that's the thing about this game.
At the bottom of the screen sit two buttons, one in each corner. These are your only controls. Each button drops a "bat" onto the screen at the exact position of your ball. These bats are mirrors, deflectors. The left button drops a " / " bat, while the right drops a horizontally opposed " " one. You can drop as many bats as you like, but I'd caution towards judicious deployment, and you'll see why.
The instant the bat is dropped, two things happen. First, the ball hits it and its course deflects 90-degrees, heading off in a direction dependent upon the direction of its path prior to impact. Second, the bat flips to the opposite type (" / " turns to " " and vice versa), adding a sort of mind-bending, deeper complexity to the challenge of strategically clearing the levels. And it's definitely an exercise in strategy, here — the hurried sort. Because, in order to get the ball to each item on the screen, a clever arrangement of bats must be laid down. Too many bats can lead to chaos, and some levels reward you for lean placement. But you can't take too long about it, because time spent zipping through empty space is time where your score multiplier is dwindling. If it gets too low…your ball disintegrates.
There is some behavioral variety to the on-screen character objects. Many just sit there. Some move towards you. Some (like jiggly bananas) dart away from you. It's a bit chaotic. And the elimination of each character triggers the next note in a haunting piano melody. The whole things delivers a tangible, very bizarre game mood. Standard Minter fare, really.
The first few times I played the game I was utterly lost at sea. After a while, I began to understand what was happening. And now, I feel I have some degree of skill at the game, but I've got a ways to go before I'm at the top of the leaderboards. Well, there are no leaderboards at the moment, but they're on the way. OpenFeint and Game Center integration will be worked in before release, and there'll be 53 score tables in all.
Minter is known for putting out titles that are distinctly "different." Deflex is no exception. The game gets huge points for challenge, uniqueness, and also drippy visual eye-candy. The psychedelia is, as expected, in full effect here.
We'll let you know when Deflex hits the app store. In the mean time I'll be honing my skills in an effort to rule the leaderboards. Well, here's hoping, anyway….
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The Entire ‘Tales of Monkey Island’ Series Is Now Available On The App Store
The wait for Tales of Monkey Island HD episodes is over. In one of the craziest App Store maneuvers I’ve ever seen, Telltale Games pushed out the remaining four episodes of the five-episode arc in a single afternoon. Each title is available at an agreeable $6.99, which a few dollars shy of what they continue to cost on other downloadable services.
In the interest of drumming up interest, Telltale has also slashed the price of the first game to $0 for a limited time. It’s a good game at a great price, and like the rest of the titles in the series, it’s faithful to the vision of Monkey Island while also still exhibiting its own charm and takes on the universe.
I've been there and back again with the series, so allow me to give you a little look at each app:
Monkey Island Tales 1 HD, Free – [Review] – [] – Talk about opening with a bang. Within the first minutes of the Tales series, Guybrush defeats his arch-nemesis the evil pirate LeChuck. Unfortunately, in the process, Guybrush loses his wife, his ship, and… unleashes a deadly pox into the world. Most of this episode centers on Guybrush getting a ship in order to find Elaine.
Monkey Island Tales 2 HD, $6.99 – Things don’t easier even though a few minor goals were met in the previous episode. In this adventure specifically, Guybrush re-unites with his wife and meets the Mer-people in his search for La Esponja Grande, which is otherwise known as the cure for the misanthropic pox infesting the world.
Monkey Island Tales 3 HD, $6.99 – You’d roast me if I revealed the setting for this episode, but I do want to note that it’s something COMPLETELY different than the previous episodes. In this place, Guybrush meets two new characters to the series, one of which becomes a key driver in the rest of the story arc.
Monkey Island Tales 4 HD, $6.99 – Guybrush goes on trial in the place where it all started. How does he defend himself against the accusations thrown at him? If only it was as simple as “Look behind you, a three-headed monkey!”
Monkey Island Tales 5 HD, $6.99 – Now, the task is to save the world against a threat. How Monkey Island of Telltale. Oh, and if it wasn’t plain, this is indeed the last episode of the series. But what a conclusion, let me tell you.
As a whole, this is a fantastic series. Sure, there are spots where the story drags and, yeah, there are definitely some horrible puzzles, but this series is easily some of Telltale Games sharpest work. The writing in particular is impressive. If you dig the first episode — don't forget, it's free — definitely start diving into the rest of these. They're worth your time.
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‘Continuity 2: The Continuation’ Review – My Game Got Flipped, Turned Upside Down
is a pretty awesome Flash game. It won the Best Student Game award at 2010 Independent Games Festival and the Gameplay Innovation Award at IndieCade 2010, so it clearly has some indie cred. Sadly, it also has a huge flaw that most Flash games share—it isn't on iOS. I'm willing to forgive that, though, because we just got an even bigger dose of awesome on iOS in Continuity 2: The Continuation [$0.99].
Continuity 2 is a mind-bending puzzle platformer. Each level is drawn on a number of sliding tiles. You can move them around to rearrange the game world as you play, but you can only connect matching edges. This part of the game is like a simple tile sliding puzzle, though there are never more than 8 tiles to contend with.
Inside the tiles, you control a little stick guy by tapping either side of the screen to walk, and swiping upward to jump. These controls are serviceable, but they don't feel fluid. That's okay, though—after a quick introduction to the basics, you won't be doing a lot of platforming. Rather than moving around the level, you'll usually be moving the level around you.
The game is divided up into 6 worlds. For the first two worlds, you'll be playing with pretty basic puzzles. Find your way to the level's key, then head to the door, going out of your way only to grab coins. After that, things get interesting. In world 3, you'll learn to rotate your phone to change the level's orientation, so you can walk on walls, fall down floors and climb on ceilings. This technique will keep you going for a while, and then you'll discover switches that trigger gates that are often linked up on completely different tiles.
These later levels get pretty wild, but Continuity 2 is great about introducing concepts slowly enough that I never felt completely out of my depth. There's no punishment for false starts or failed attempts. I was genuinely excited to solve a puzzle by leaping down a hole, swapping tiles for my destination part way through, rotating my phone and then flying back to yet another tile. Our users seem pretty impressed, too.
There are a total of 50 levels, with minimal replayability. If you collect all the coins in a level, the game tracks your completion time, and each level has a challenge time to beat. Achievements and leaderboards would probably help give Continuity 2 a little more staying power. On the flip side, the game won't ever leave you stuck— you can play each level in a world once it unlocks, and you can unlock them without completing every level.
You really shouldn't pass Continuity 2 up if you're a puzzle-game fan. Screenshots don't do it justice – the minimalistic style works beautifully in motion—and both the music and sound effects are great. It also has the rare distinction of being a game that really feels at home on iOS. The touch-screen tile sliding is great, but once the rotation comes in it seems only natural that it's been taken off the computer screen and made portable. I'll probably keep this one around long after I master all the challenge times, just to show people how neat iOS gaming can be.
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